Paul at Wizbang has damning and clear evidence that one of the failed levies was not overtopped, as the media has claimed, but simply failed. It failed under conditions where the water was nowhere near the top of the levies. It failed because the levee was of a flawed design. This is not Bush’s fault, but does prove his concern about an early evacuation was warranted and how he was one of the few political leaders trying to do the right thing that day (not the least expensive). Good detective work Paul!

5 Responses to “Must See Katrina Post”

My wife and I always loved to go to NO for trips and party time. Some good resturants there we missed as the town degraded over the years.

For the last twenty years New Orleans was on a glide path to self distruction, however that is so much ignored since it doesn’t fit the meme.

Before Katrina, read the local paper archives to see the murder statistics, the crime statistics, the sunday paper “victims of driveby rapes of women on the streets”, look at the fact that almost every house had burgular bars on the windows.

New Orleans had morphed over my time there from a southern charm town to Sodom and Gommorah with and southern accent and multiple drive by killers.

You werent safe going to Mardi Gras downtown due to the gang corner shootouts anymore.

The San Francisco Earthquake, The Chicago Fire and other historic upheaveals have given rebirth to new and different cities in their aftermath.

To wish for a clone of New Orleans rebuilt, is one of those things that you may regret what you wished for.

My wife and I always appreciated the New Orleans of our younger days, we liked it so much, but over the years had so much observed the obvious decline, that eventually we decided to shut down for a while our home base and bought a house in New Orleans and lived there for about two years. Our objective was to savor the last bit of the “good memories” of New Orleans for our retirement years rather than the pitiful degradation we saw was on the horizon. New Orleans was on a total downward spiral of self destruction, proped up by the “legend” of what it was.

Katrina only aborted the spiral and was exploited to the max as a destruction of a precious jewel that should be recut.

When I sit back with personal knowledge and experience of what it was really like, I smile a little, I observe the usual “victims are good mantra” but still wonder, why didn’t anyone look at what was happening there the week BEFORE the storm.

If you had been there like I was, all the Nagin, Blankass and other spin crapola would not have been a shock, it would have been expected.

I posted the following over on Wizbang in response to his ‘expose’,
“”I’m not going to say you are right or wrong in your conclusion, what you said looks ok. Except, I saw all that about the levee being undermined, not overtopped during the time of the original coverage, it was broadcast more than once. I don’t know for sure, but basically I only watch Fox News, so I’m sure that’s where it was on. Question? AJ Strata says the city and state were responsible for the maintenance of the levees at that point because they were within the city, Is that right or not. Not the Corp of Engs. One other point, who is “congress” that kept it secret? that would be 535 people. 535 people can’t keep a secret.””

I’m not sure what point he was trying to make because it was all ‘old’ news. I saw all that info about the levee being ‘undermined’ not ‘overtopped’ bac at the time it happened, There was no secret there.

Don’t you remember all the controversy about the warning about “overtopped” vs “failure” in the President’s briefing. That’s why all that was hot news a year ago.

Also, AJ you said in you post of 8/28 about Katrina, point number 5 that the canal levee that failed was in the city and was not the responsibility of the Corp of Eng. Is that right? Why is Wiz laying the blame on the Corp?

Congress? Secret? 535 people kept that a secret for a year? not in a million years. As I said, it wasn’t a secret anyhow.

Went over to the site several times and commented. Paul really seems to have a lot of the facts wrong. He didn’t like me pointing this out to him. But in particular, what he got all wound up about is that about a month after the storm, he thought a Corp of Eng guy was lying. He probably was, but I’m not sure even he (the COE guy) knew it at the time.
Well, what he was really lying about is that it really wasn’t the poor design that cause the failure, it was poor maintenance. Well, Paul thought that was some kinda big secret and he was spilling the beans and was entitled to a lot of glory for that. Well, it wasn’t a secret. It was all over the networks back in Aug, Sept ’05, but somehow they got off track and Paul didn’t realize. Well, when I pointed out to him that he might’ve been mistaken, he got all wound up,
and as is normal in those cases, if you can’t argue the facts, attack the messenger. That was his strategy. I took him off my ‘favorites’ list, he’s not worth the time to read. I’ve heard he banned me, but I’m not sure since I don’t read his site anymore.
So beware of any info you think you may learn from that site.